Chennai: 3-yr-old gets Rs 92L for parent’s death in accident

A 3-yr- old girl Kavinaya of Chennai was awarded Rs.92L by a Chennai Court as a compensation. Her software engineer father and mother were fatally knocked down by a recklessly driven sand-laden truck in Chennai. Rs 50 lakh will be kept in her name in a nationalized bank until she’s 18, her grandparents will get Rs 20.9 lakh each as compensation.

Kavinaya’s father Prathap Kumar (28) was working in Canada and had come to Chennai on a 10-day holiday. Though Kavinaya too was on the bike with her parents, safely seated on her mother’s lap, she was thrown off the bike on impact of the crash in the posh Indira Nagar locality on November 20, 2009. Her parents died on the spot.

As a module leader in the Canada-based Kumaran Systems, Kumar was earning Rs 6.53 lakh per annum. His company too confirmed in court that he had been paying tax for the amount in Canada and that he would have reached the Rs 10 lakh salary mark had he been alive now. The girl’s mother was 26 then and was working as a receptionist in a private company in Chennai.

On June 27, N Gunavathi, judge of the motor accidents claims tribunalhere, awarded a total compensation of Rs 91.78 lakh taking into account the pitiable condition of the child and the ripe age of her grandparents. The judge also pointed out that there was no delay in the filing of the first information report, no contradiction between medical records and the FIR and the witness account too was coherent. The fact that the lorry driver was negligent and that he was driving the vehicle in a rash and negligent manner too has been proved through eyewitnesses, the judge said.

Considering the victims’ age, positions they held and the salary they had been drawing, the court said that pecuniary loss suffered by the child, along with funeral expenses and loss of love and affection, worked out to Rs 91.78 lakh. The amount, to be paid by ICICI Lombard General Insurance Company Ltd. on behalf of lorry owner A Sheik Mohammed, should be deposited in a nationalized bank within three months. The beneficiaries are also eligible for an interest of 7.5 per cent per annum from December 2009, when the claim petitions were filed in the court, the judge said.